Somebody paid $2,000 for an early copy of No Man's Sky

No Man's Sky is just 11 days away (or 12 in the UK), but that was still too long for one eager eBayer. An alleged early copy of the game sold for $2,000 (not counting shipping) on the online auction site, meaning whoever won the auction paid roughly $175 for each day of early access. And that's assuming it arrived today.

The seller claims to have opened and tested the game ahead of time, saying it all checks out. Pictures on the listing show the box both closed and opened and the PS4 UI with the disc apparently loaded in and ready to go. That said, it's really weird that the glossy paper slip in the manual slot has the old release date for the game (June 21, 2016), let alone any release date at all, and a "Rating Pending" marker from the ESRB. It's clearly just an old poster.

And why is every single piece of art - front cover, inside cover, paper slip, disc - that one illustration of a pilot looking up at a glowing crystal thingy? It all seems a little off to me, though I hope for the buyer's sake that this is indeed a legitimate copy that just happened to fall off the back of a proverbial truck. It does look more official than the actual "gone gold" disc from Hello Games.

Assuming it really is an early copy of No Man's Sky, it should work fine since the game can be played offline. It would take some serious guts for the buyer to connect online and start adding planet and species names to the big database before everyone else. As for us folks who don't have $2,000 to spare on shady eBay listings, we can always watch those Explore, Fight, Trade, and Survive videos again and sigh longingly.